I. CHAP. wealth, something less than two-thirds was by the A.D. 1665. act confirmed to the Protestants; and of the remainder, a portion almost equal in quantity, but not in quality, to one-third, was appropriated to the Catholics.1 1 From a valuable MS. paper belonging to Sheffield Grace, Esq., and published by him in his interesting Memoirs of the Family of Grace, it appears that the profitable lands forfeited in Ireland under the commonwealth amounted to seven million seven hundred and eight thousand two hundred and thirty-seven statute acres, leaving undisturbed about eight million five hundred thousand acres belonging to the Protestants, the constant good-affection men of the Irish, the church, and the crown, besides some lands never seized or surveyed In 1675, the forfeited lands had been disposed of as follows:Granted to the English. The forty-nine officers are those who claimed arrears for service under the king before 1649. The duke of York received a grant of all the lands held by the regicides who had been attainted. Provisors were persons in whose favour provisoes had been made in the acts. Nominees were the Catholics named by the king to be restored to their mansion-houses and two thousand acres contiguous. Transplantation refers to the Catholics whom Cromwell forced from their own lands, and settled in Connaught. There remained eight hundred and twenty-four thousand three hundred and ninety-one acres still unappropriated, which were parts of towns, or possessed by English or Irish without title, or, on account of some doubts, had never been set out.-Mem. 37-39. ( 63 ) CHAPTER II. MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF YORK WITH ANNE HYDE-OF THE KING II. AMONG the immediate consequences of the restora- CHAP. tion, nothing appeared to the intelligent observer more A.D. 1660. extraordinary than the almost instantaneous revolution which it wrought in the moral habits of the people. Under the government of men making profession of godliness, vice had been compelled to wear the exterior garb of virtue; but the moment the restraint was removed, it stalked forth without disguise, and was everywhere received with welcome. The Cavaliers, to celebrate their triumph, abandoned themselves to ebriety and debauchery; and the new loyalists, that they might prove the sincerity of their conversion, strove to excel the Cavaliers in licentiousness. Charles, who had not forgotten his former reception in Scotland, gladly availed himself of the opportunity to indulge his favourite propensities. That affectation of piety and decorum which had marked the palace of the protector Oliver, was soon exchanged for a perpetual round of pleasure and revelry; and the court of the English king, if inferior in splendour, did not yield in refinement and voluptuousness to that of his French 11. CHAP. contemporary, Louis XIV. Among the females who A.D. 1660. sought to win his attentions (and this, we are told, was the ambition of several1), the first place, both for beauty and influence, must be allotted to Barbara Villiers, daughter of Viscount Grandison, and wife to a gentleman of the name of Palmer. On the very day of the king's arrival in the capital she established her dominion over his heart, and contrived to retain it for years, in defiance of the inconstancy of his disposition and the intrigues of her rivals. With her Charles generally spent several hours of the day; and, even when the council had assembled to deliberate in his presence, the truant monarch occasionally preferred to while away his time in the bewitching company and conversation of his mistress. Sept. 13. James and Henry, the dukes of York and Gloucester, religiously copied the example set by their sove1660. reign and elder brother. But before the lapse of six months, Henry was borne to the grave; and soon afterwards it began to be whispered at court that James was married to a woman of far inferior rank, Anne, the daughter of the chancellor Hyde. The duke had become acquainted with her at the court of his sister, the princess of Orange, to whom she was maid of honour. Anne possessed few pretensions to beauty; but wit and manner supplied the place of personal charms; she attracted the notice of the young 1 Reresby, 7. 2 Roger Palmer was son of Sir James Palmer, chancellor of the garter, by Catherine, eldest daughter of Sir William Herbert, afterwards earl of Powis. Roger Palmer was created by Charles II. earl of Castlemaine and Baron Limerick. He died in 1705. 3 "He delighted in a bewitching kind of pleasure called saun"tering."-Sheffield, ii. 78. The king mourned in purple.-Pep. i. 139. 5 La duchesse de York est fort laide; la bouche extraordinaire PRIVATE MARRIAGE OF JAMES. 65 II. Nov. 24. 1660. Sept. 3 prince, and had the address to draw from her lover a CHAP. promise, and afterwards a private contract of marriage. A.D. 1659. From the Hague, she followed the royal family to England; and in a few months her situation induced James to marry her clandestinely, according to the rite of the church of England,' and to reveal the important secret to the king, whose objections (for he heard it with pain) were soon subdued by the passionate importunity of his brother. To most fathers this alliance would have proved a subject of joy; but Hyde, with expressions of anger, the extravagance of which might have provoked a doubt of their sincerity, affected to deplore the disgrace of the royal family, and advised Charles, after the precedents of former reigns, to send the presumptuous female to the Tower. Unable to persuade the king, who perhaps laughed at his officiousness in secret, he confined, in virtue of his parental authority, the undutiful daughter to a room in his own house; while, by the connivance of one of the family, probably the mother, James had free access to the cell of the captive, and sought by his assiduity to console her for the displeasure, whether it were real or pretended, of her father. Neither had the father much reason to complain. The king made him Nov. 3. a present of twenty thousand pounds, and raised him, by the title of Baron Hyde of Hindon, to the peerage. The choice of James was severely condemned by his mother, by his eldest sister, and by the political enemies of the chancellor. The princess of Orange, ment fendue, et les yeux fort eraillez, mais très courtoise.-Journal de Monconis, p. 22, Lyons, 1666. Hamilton says, that she had l'air grand, la taille assez belle, et beaucoup d'esprit.-Mem. de Grammont, i. 149, edition de Cazin. Pepys, that she was a plain woman, like her mother (i. 188). 1 Kennet's Register, from the Council book, 381. • Clarendon, 31, 32. II. Sept. 23. CHAP. who had recently arrived in England, declared to the A.D. 1660. king that she would never yield the precedence to a woman who had stood as a servant behind her chair. The queen-mother indulged in terms of the bitterest reproach; and hastened her promised visit to her children, that she might prevent so foul a disgrace to the royal houses of England and France.1 Charles Berkeley, whether he was influenced by enmity to. Hyde, or by the hope of making his fortune, came to their aid, affirming with oaths that Anne had formerly been his mistress, and bringing forward the earl of Arran, Jermyn, Talbot, and Killigrew, as witnesses of her loose and wanton behaviour. Lastly, divines and lawyers were produced, grave and learned casuists, who maintained, in presence of the duke, that no private contract of marriage on his part could be valid without the previous consent of the sovereign. The resolution of James was shaken; he interrupted his visits to Worcester House, and assured his mother and sister that he had ceased to look upon Anne as his lawful wife. Oct. 22. While In a few weeks she was delivered of a son. she lay in the throes of childbirth, her confessor, Dr. Morley, bishop elect of Worcester, standing by the 1 She previously intended to come, that she might meet all her children together, and look after her dower.-Clar. 32-36. It would appear, that the lands settled on her as her dower had been in a great measure shared among persons who had a hand in her husband's death. On inquiry, the present holders were found to be Okey, Walton, Scroop, Norton, Pride, Whalley, Edwards, and Tichborne, the king's judges; Denby, serjeant-at-arms to the court; Lambert and Blackwell.-Jour. of Com. 1660, June 23. 2 Morley tells us that she was accustomed to receive the sacrament every month, and then proceeds thus: "Always the day before "she received, she made a voluntary confession of what she thought "she had offended God in, either by omission or commission, pro❝fessing her sorrow for it, and promising amendment in it; and then, kneeling down, she desired and received absolution in the |